


Deskmates

by nightsstarr



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24076999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightsstarr/pseuds/nightsstarr
Summary: For Annette week Day 2, self-doubt.Annette's first day as a Black Eagle is full of uncertainty, but she wasn't going to let anything get in the way of her studies. Not even herself!
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Annette Fantine Dominic
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	Deskmates

Annette chewed her lip nervously as she adjusted her bag on her shoulder. She’d woken up an extra hour early to make sure she’d be ready on time. She cleaned her room, so her books were perfectly lined up on her desk. Her uniform was pressed and clean, and she braided her hair before she went to sleep so all she had to do was untwist the ends so she could put them up in her signature loops. 

Mercie had been furious with her when she decided to transfer to the Black Eagles. 

It wasn’t anything personal! She loved her friends in the Blue Lions. That’s what made it such a hard decision. 

But Adrestia had always borne the most gifted mages. Faerghus was home to lance users, and Annette just didn’t have the physical strength to keep up. She almost cried after she lost to Felix, Ingrid, Sylvain and Ashe in just one afternoon of weapons training. 

She’d blow any of them under the table in a magic competition, Mercie pointed out kindly. And that was another problem--except Mercie, who specialized in Faith and not Reason, there was no one for Annette to test her skills against.

Mercie wasn’t happy with her decision to switch Houses.  _ Annette _ wasn’t completely happy about it.

But it was too late to back out now!

She’d made her decision, it was time to do the best she could with it.

After glancing at herself again in the mirror, she decided that she’d done everything she conceivably could to ensure that her first day on the Black Eagles would be a success. 

She purposely took the back way to the classrooms instead of cutting through the dining hall to grab breakfast like she used to. That way she wouldn’t have to pass by the Blue Lions classroom and it felt less like betrayal. 

She took a seat almost in front. She didn’t want to seem  _ too  _ eager her first day, not when it was so nice of Professor Byleth to take her under her wing in a new class, anyway. Second table from the front, on the right side, because Annette always liked being on the right side. She was used to sitting on the right, because Mercie was a left, and if Annette sat on her left their elbows would bump when they wrote. 

She smoothed out her skirt. She’d gotten there early, before the professor, even. She used the morning silence to set up her ink pot, her loose papers for note-taking--four pages, and the last one was really only so that she didn’t need to write against the table, because sometimes the wood had a chip in it and her nib would catch and make in blots over her neat pages. 

“Annette,” a familiar voice said, and Annette swiveled in her seat. Professor Byleth’s deep blue hair looked pretty against the morning light. “You’re here early.”

Annette grinned at her, then her smile wavered usurely. “Is--is that okay? I didn’t mean to be  _ too _ early just--”

“It’s fine, of course.” The professor’s tone wasn’t unkind, and Annette nodded. “Are you a bit nervous, Annette? You shouldn’t be. My students will help you feel right at home, I assure you.”

"I didn't mean to imply that they wouldn't Professor!" Annette said quickly. She wished Mercie were here to settle her nerves. Mercie's presence alone helped Annette feel more sure of herself. 

"Relax, Annette," the professor said, and she covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. "Why don't we get through a lecture first, then if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them."

Annette nodded, and she noticed her hands were clenched into fists. She relaxed them and laid them down on either side of her stack of paper ready for note-taking. "That helps a lot, Professor. I appreciate it!"

Byleth smiled at her before she turned to the blackboard to write some notes on it ahead of the other students' arrival.

The first two to arrive were Edlegard and Hubert, Hubert constantly looming over her shoulder somehow. 

Edelgard stopped in the main aisle before Annette's seat and she smiled at her. "You've just transferred into our class this weekend right?" 

Annette's stomach flipped. The heir apparent to the Adrestian throne was… talking to her? "Yes!" she answered hurriedly when she realized her long silence could come off as rudeness. "Yes, I was hoping to excel under the knowledge of Adrestian experts in magic!"

The smile on Edelgard's face turned proud. "Very wise of you. And ambitious. Two excellent traits. And you wield an axe, too, do you not?"

"Oh… I don't want to disappoint you, but I put my magic studies at the forefront and my skill with an axe probably isn't where it should be." She flinched at her own words. Ashe lectured her about putting herself down before others could form their own opinions.

The towhead blonde didn't seem to notice. "Here's hoping that I can develop my skills in Reason as you sharpen yours with an axe." 

"Oh, thank you! I promise to do my best!"

Edelgard smiled at her before continuing to the seat closest to Professor Byleth. Hubert took his place next to her against the wall.

Dorothea and Petra wandered in, talking animatedly about something or other. Dorothea's melodious voice made Annette's own lungs shrivel up and crumble to dust. It seemed silly of her to even bother singing her dumb songs in the greenhouse, or the stables, or the kitchens, or wherever she happened to be distracted enough to lapse into silly singsong phrases and nonsensical rhymes. 

Bernadetta and Linhardt both sat by themselves in the back room, and Annette could hear the skritch of a nib point against paper as Bernadetta furiously scribbled away at something--surely not class notes, as they hadn't started the lecture yet. Linhardt had his arms folded on his desk, and he looked about ready to fall asleep with his chin propped on an elbow.

"Is this seat taken?"

Annette looked up to find Caspar grinning down at her, his hand already on the back of a chair. 

"Oh… no! Go right ahead and take it, if you want!"

"Thanks." Caspar had with him some hand-me-down text, treated poorly, the cover bent at the spine and curling at the edges. That was all he seemed to bring with him. Annette glanced down at his relatively empty workspace when Ferdinand walked past them, to the desk at the front of the classroom opposite Hubert and Edelgard, and took his spot there.

The lecture today was on axe-wielding, and Annette was determined to prove herself. She answered the professor's questions, but not  _ too  _ many. She didn't want to seem like a know-it-all.

Overall, she thought her first class as an actual Black Eagle was going well. 

It was near the end of class when she flipped to her third page for note-taking--and she noticed Caspar glance her way and cast a wide-eyed look at her pages of notes already taken--that she knocked her inkpot over. 

It was quiet, thankfully, and nobody except Caspar probably noticed. She felt her face heat up as she glanced at him and their eyes met, and she desperately righted the inkwell, careful to avoid getting ink on her hands. He was covering his mouth with his hand, trying to hold back a snicker, and she bit her lip.

She never should’ve transferred classes, she should’ve just stayed in the Blue Lions so she could sit in the front of the classroom and answer as many questions as Professor Manuela could ask because she knew no one else would mind and she could sit next to Mercie who  _ never _ laughed at her when she spilled things, not even that time she’d spilled setting powder out of her makeup kit and it made her look like a witch.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Caspar said quietly, and he was smiling at her. Still laughing at her, Annette thought, ashamed. “It’s not a big deal--the Professor woke Linhardt up in the middle of a dream last week and he jumped and knocked his inkpot off the table and it went flying halfway across the room.”

At least her notes weren’t ruined. Besides, if Caspar thought she was a clumsy screw-up, all she had to do was prove him wrong. She could do that with one person, no problem! A whole class? That was another story entirely.

She pulled up the edge of her skirt, forlorn, to reveal a stain on her blue tights. 

Caspar followed her line of vision and he frowned. 

“Everyone will know how clumsy I am,” she whispered, panicked.

He furrowed his brow, confused but then he looked to his own pot of ink. He picked it up and tipped some over the leg of his pants, then let it clatter to the floor. 

Annette flinched away, trying to keep splatters of ink from dirtying her boots. “Caspar!” she gasped, and the Professor’s voice stopped as Edelgard turned quickly to shush them. 

“Sorry, Professor,” Caspar said, an apologetic chuckle in his tone. “Spilled some ink, is all.”

Annette frowned at him. 

“Again with the ink?” Dorothea demanded, wrinkling her nose. “Honestly.”

“I’m sure Cyril will just be glad it is not splattered about the whole room this time,” Ferdinand said to Annette’s left. 

“Here you go, Annette,” Caspar said, and he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. It wasn’t folded perfectly, and it was crumpled from being in his pocket, but it was clean and smelled like fresh linen. She used it to dab at the stain on her tights. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” she whispered when the Professor started lecturing again. 

“Like I said, don’t worry about it! Everybody knows I’m not the most careful with things. And if it makes you feel better then it’s worth it!”

Another blush tinted Annette’s cheeks, but this one was from something other than embarrassment, something softer and stronger. 

Annette scrambled to finish taking notes on the remainder of the lecture, and when class finished, everyone seemed to have more or less forgotten about the ink incident. 

“Say, Caspar,” she said as she stacked her books neatly and swept them into her arms. “You like sweet buns, don’t you? Mercie has a really great recipe for them, maybe I could prepare some, if you were interested? To make up for the trouble I caused.”

“Well, like I said, it’s really no big deal. But I  _ definitely _ wouldn’t say no to some dessert!” His bright blue eyes flicked to the side of her face, and his expression became serious. “Hey, Annette, you have ink on your cheek.”

“Oh no, I do? That’s so embarrassing!” she gasped. She had a compact mirror somewhere in her bag, and she flipped it open and started rifling through the things in it.

“You really worry way too much. Here,” he said, and he leaned forward and wiped his knuckle across her cheek. He frowned and passed his thumb over the same spot, and Annette’s blush was almost painful at his point. 

“Caspar…” she said, her voice edged with discomfort, and she put her hand on his wrist to push his hand gently back. 

“Got it,” he said, and when Annette looked down at his fingers they were dirty with ink. 

She touched her cheek reflexively and looked up at him shyly. 

“Guess this means you owe me again, huh? Better double that batch of sweet buns!” He grinned at her and stretched an arm over his head as he pushed his chair in next to her. “I’ll see you next class, okay? Maybe we can be deskmates again, without all the ink spilling.”

She smiled softly at him while she pushed her own chair in. “I’d like that.”

“Great!” he said, practically laughing with glee. “And don’t forget! You promised me baked goods!”

“I won’t forget, Caspar,” Annette said, and she rolled her eyes at his overeagerness. 

He smiled at her again before hurrying to catch up to Linhardt, who was waiting just inside the threshold of the classroom.

“Glad to have you in class, Annette,” Professor Byleth said as she smiled at her on her way out.

Maybe joining the Black Eagles would be a good change, Annette thought as she hugged her books to her chest. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write these two and this wasn't really that shippy but I swear I'm going to get around to contributing some fun content to this tag. Annette and Caspar have one of my favorite ending cards. Annette being rescued and then falling in love as her rescuer escorts her back to safety is like... objectively one of the best endings for a couple in the game T.T
> 
> Happy Annette week!


End file.
